Aperture: idiot's guide needed re Albums, Projects & Folders

[Hello.there]

:o

No matter how much I read up on this I still can't quite figure out what are the chief differences between folders, albums and projects in Aperture 2.

Can anyone provide a brief idiot's guide, or provide a link to an idiot-proof explanation?

Thanks.

PS When people refer to the "brown" folders....err, are they the ones that look yellow to me?

[Hello.there]

** cough **

This isn't a bump, honest, I just have a bad chest.

[nutmac]

Project is where you store photos to during import. For instance, "Vacation in Hawaii" project.

Albums is like photo albums on your bookshelf. You can assign photos from one or more projects into albums. For instance, "Maui" album.

Folder lets you group multiple folders, projects, and/or albums together. For instance, "2008" folder.

Expanding you have:
- "2007", "2008", etc. folders at the top level

On "2008" folder, you might have "Vacation in Hawaii" project (among other projects) and perhaps "Best of 2008" album.

On "Vacation in Hawaii" project, you might have "Maui", "Big Island" albums.

"Best of 2008" album will have your favorite photos from various projects shot in 2008.

iTunes to Aperture analogy:

Song:Album:Playlist:Folder = Photo:Project:Album:Folder

[kkat69]

Project is where you store photos to during import. For instance, "Vacation in Hawaii" project.

Albums is like photo albums on your bookshelf. You can assign photos from one or more projects into albums. For instance, "Maui" album.

Folder lets you group multiple folders, projects, and/or albums together. For instance, "2008" folder.

Expanding you have:
- "2007", "2008", etc. folders at the top level

On "2008" folder, you might have "Vacation in Hawaii" project (among other projects) and perhaps "Best of 2008" album.

On "Vacation in Hawaii" project, you might have "Maui", "Big Island" albums.

"Best of 2008" album will have your favorite photos from various projects shot in 2008.

iTunes to Aperture analogy:

Song:Album:Playlist:Folder = Photo:Project:Album:Folder

Kewl way to look at it. Thanks. I got Aperture when I recently bought my Rebel xti and I'm pretty software savvy (just lack all kinds of common sense according to my wife, yah there's a pot calling the kettle black) but this is a good way for me to explain it to her if she wants to review pictures or what not.

She's scared of Aperture so we stick to iPhoto since it's (at least in our house) 'Wife friendly' and I just 'export version' when I'm done touching up photos.

Thanks for the analogy.

[orthorex]

Projects store your masters. A master can only be in one place in your library. If you delete an image from a Project, that image is gone. You can move masters from one Project to another.

When you create an Album, the images you place in it are "versions" of the masters. An Album can be deleted without loosing the master(s).

Example: You take a trip to Europe. 3 countries. The masters from each country could be grouped in to projects. You then could create a "Folder" to hold the projects called "Europe 2008". (You can not place masters or versions directly in to Folders).

You could then create Albums in the Europe Folder to further organize your vacation. One could be "Kids" for example. This Album could contain "versions" of all of the pictures of your kids from all of the countries that you visited. Now these can be viewed in one place.

The nice thing about this is it provides easy access to groups of like images, without breaking up the chronological order of the images in your projects.

Hope this helps a little.